to really not understand the genetics involved in eye color?

[CheerfulYank]

It's all very confusing. I remember something about punnett squares, and two blue eyed people not "being able" to have a brown-eyed child, but now I think that's a myth, isn't it? Or something?

My eyes are a very pale blue, DH's are brownish hazel. DS's are blue. I was just on a website "predicting" your future children's eye colors and it said they would be brown as DH's are brown, but that's obviously not the case.

Can someone who did not spend high school biology class flirting with their lab partner explain this to me? In small words?

My parents both have blue eyes and so do I and my middle sister.
My mother loves telling the story though about how when my youngest sister was around one, she had an old lady tell her how what gorgeous green eyes her child had and my mother told her Dsis had blue and then was terribly embarrassed to realise she was wrong and hadn't known what colour her own daughter's eyes were.

Blue blue blue here. My grandmother wanted a brown-eyed child and had to wait till her first great-grandchild!

I love genetics!

Scientists believe everyone with blue eyes alive is related to a single common ancestor. Before the ancestor with the gene mutation, humans only had brown eyes. That blows my mind.

Heterochromia is pretty interesting as well, never met anyone with it though.

If they are correct about that it kind of goes towards proving how so many people are related in some way doesn't it. I mean how many people either have blue eyes or a blue eyed person in the family.

My pil both have blue eyes .........dh has blue eyes, sil 2 has blue eyes BUT sil1 (middle sibling) has BROWN...................wonder what mil was up to 35yrs ago?

My eyes are green, but my left eye has two brown freckles in the iris! DP's are Brown.

Ds, 4 months, still has blue. Im hoping they will turn green. anyone know when they are meant to change color?

We are mutants I reckon :)

My Dad has blue eyes and my Mum greeny-brown.
I have dark greeny-blue/grey eyes.
DH has blue eyes
DS has dark grey/blue eys.

i'm confused now

does anyones elses eye colour change?

mine are hazel but in the summer they are really green (i get called the eye eyed monster)

"My X has brown eyes (egyptian) i have olive coloured eyes... DS has BLUE eyes. Reason for this is that European genes are stronger (having migrated up from point of human origin, rumoured to be Ethiopia-ish) while egyptian genes didn't have to travel so far."

Sorry but that's BS. More likely, your X has a recessive blue eye gene.

If European genes trumped African ones, you would see little blondies being born in mixed race families of one blond European and one black African parent. You would also see blue eye (European mutation) being a dominant trait, and it clearly isn't.

I agree with cote on that one.

I'm pretty sure that HerScaryness didn't say that in all seriousness.

Just 4% of the world's population have blue/light coloured eyes. It's a long time since I've studied this stuff but the theory is that all the blue eyed people can be traced back to a single ancestor who had a random mutation

My daughter has one blue eye and one brown eye. (Heterochromia mentioned by ChuffMuffin) How does that happen? I teach Biology but I am still not really very sure about it. I'm hoping someone here can explain!

I'm sorry if this has been covered but I have two (probably stupid questions).

1. Where do hazel eyes fit in exactly? In the information that I looked at re eye colour, colours were either classified as brown, green or blue. My eyes are greeny brown. Recessive i guess? But brown or green? Or neither?

1. My eye colour is almost exactly like the first photo here www.helpfulhealthtips.com/makeup-tips-for-hazel-eyes/. You wouldn't classify them as green would you?

Sorry if I am being a numpty!

smugaboo I personally wouldn't say the eye in the first picture is hazel, the one at the far right of the set of four is what I'd call hazel.

moocowmoo - I mentioned upstream that different eye colours is due to chimeric expression of genes IIRC. Different alleles/genes being expressed in different cells/tissues.
Quite rare and my late Aunt had it.

If European genes trumped African ones, you would see little blondies being born in mixed race families of one blond European and one black African parent. You would also see blue eye (European mutation) being a dominant trait, and it clearly isn't

Actually I have seen mixed race children who have blonde hair!

Some did have caribbean heritage which would explain it, but I know of one family where the mix is african/european and they have a blonde haired child.

Racial mixing is a whole other kettle of fish IME

*and blue/green eyes in mixed race children too.

Actually I've just been studying my eyes in the mirror, and whilst if pushed I'd always have described them as green they're actually blue/grey round the outside and hazel/brown in the middle

ExDh - Brown hair green eyes
Me - Black hour, brown eyes
DS - Black hair, brown eyes (Was pure blonde until about 9 then got darker and darker)
DD - Blonde hair, green eyes (when she was born she had red hair that went pure blonde by the time she was 1)

salmotrutta sorry. I missed your earlier posts. I have now had a look back through. Does that mean that the alleles are the same in all cells but just that they are expressed differently? If so, what causes that to happen? Or does it mean that there are actually different alleles in the different cells? Or is there no way of telling?

In a nutshell, you and your partner can both be brown-eyed, but have a blue eyed child if both of you are carrying a recessive blue eyed gene and that is what has randomly been selected in the particular combination of genes creating that child. Having a recessive blue eyed gene is not something you would know although if you have parents/grandparents or even blood aunties/uncles/cousins with blue eyes that would be a clue.

Green eyes are a colour in their own right, not a combination, but are the least dominating colour. Brown is the most dominant but although more likely that if you and partner have brown eyes you will have brown-eyed children, it is not definite.

Smugaboo, hazel eyes fall into the category of either brown or green eyes depending on shade. Hazel is not a category on its own (such as blue).

Chrononaut, there is still lots of time for your DCs eyes to change to green. The final eye colour is not decided until 3 years of age although most eye colours are set by around 6 months. Even then they can continue to develop shade-wise, ie, bright blue eyes at 6 months become darker blue, or grey-blue eyes by toddler age.

YANBU to not understand the genetics involved in eye colour, because there are multiple loci involved and it is not as simple as you were probably taught in school.

My eye colour changed with puberty. Started out blue like my dad, went grey as a teen and were green by the time I finished high school. My mother has hazel/green eyes and there's plenty of red heads in the family.

Bit of a pain with GCSE oral exams. Started out learning "Ich habe blaue augen" and had to change it to grune :(